Kachin Pounded Dried Beef

Before it is a salad, amè htaung is a larder. Kachin households have always dried beef — salted strips on racks above the hearth, cured by smoke and the cool mountain air — because the hills are far from any market and a cow is not eaten in a day. Colonial-era accounts of the Kachin Hills describe exactly these larders of dried meat, which is why we date the dish there: the drying is documented; the mortar work that turns it into dinner was never written down, just done.

And what mortar work it is. The dried beef is toasted over flame until the edges catch, then pounded — hard, in batches, with intent — until it splits into a rough floss the color of teak. Into that go roasted chilies, toasted Sichuan pepper, garlic, and ginger, and then the fresh rescue party of shallots, mint, and cilantro. No oil at all. The result sits somewhere between a salad and a seasoning: smoky, numbing, salty, and almost weightless, eaten in pinches over rice or alongside a cup of khaung yay, which is where it does its best work.

The texture is the whole test. Under-pounded, it is chewy strips with spice on them; over-processed, it is sawdust. You want teased wool — fibres split open but still long enough to remember the grill. A food processor cannot do this. Your arm can, and the arm is traditional.